A mobile telephone creates more opportunities for people to talk with each other, especially while in public places.
This expanded ability to converse has some negative aspects brought about by talk being an easy-to-use, expressive, and also noisy activity.
There are several ways that people attempt to deal with the situation of having private conversations while in a public place. First, individuals may be noisy in their conversation. This approach requires judgment about when privacy is not an overriding concern or when talk would be considered acceptable or too important to miss in a given situation.
Second, an individual may talk quietly. It is not uncommon to see a telephone user in a corner of the room in an attempt to shield a conversation. This is often inconvenient for the telephone users on both ends and again requires judgment to determine when this approach is working adequately.
Third, the individual may move the conversation elsewhere. It is not uncommon to see people leaving the room with a mobile telephone in hand. However, the movement itself is distracting, particularly when the telephone user's attention is focused on the conversation and not the motion (e.g. banging doors). The movement is also often accompanied by snatches of conversation (e.g. “Hello! how are you?”, “Just a second”).
Fourth, an individual may use an inaudible technology. Switching the conversation to a different modality, such as two-way text pager, is quiet. However, all parties to the conversation must be willing and able to switch to new modality.
Fifth, the individual may not take the call. Voicemail is a traditional way of dealing with calls when one is engaged. However, some telephone calls must be answered.
Sixth, in addition to the problems of privacy and disruption, recent observations of public uses of mobile telephones have revealed other disadvantages of mobile communications. Users may need to quickly, but informatively and politely, disengage from a conversation when their attention must immediately be elsewhere (e.g. listening to an important announcement, negotiating traffic).
Consequently, there is sometimes a need for the call to either be temporarily paused or fully discontinued appropriately by a very simple interaction.
Therefore, there is a desire to provide a system and method for conducting a telephone conversation in a public place without the above-identified disadvantages.